How We Feel Is Hard To Fake
by vanillaXtwilight
Summary: "Relationships are supposed to make you feel like...there is this whole other person out there who you can show yourself to who is gonna accept you for everything you are. Don't you want that?" How the end of 9x22 should have gone. Jackson's POV.


"Hey, you wanna go to Joe's?" April asks, whipping around on the sole of her foot and smiling up at me hopefully. I can't recall the number of times this exact thing had happened over the years and as the ever familiar words reach my ears I can't help but grin.

I open my mouth to respond but as I inhale a breath I catch sight of the opening elevator doors in my peripheral vision.

"_Can you just wait? Just wait for me at Joe's. We can have a drink, we can talk. Just…okay? Just wait for me at Joe's."_

As memories of that night flood my mind, I swallow the lump rising in my throat. I can practically hear the sound of the bell above Joe's ringing in my ear as I entered the bar with April Kepner nowhere in sight and three simple words left to die on the tip of my tongue.

I don't know how she would have responded that night had she stayed. But that was the problem, wasn't it? She hadn't stayed. She had chosen to leave me and Seattle behind for good without even the chance at a proper farewell.

As I stare down in to April's bright, wide eyes all I want is to say "Yes." More than anything I want to spend a night getting lost in the taste of scotch and the sound of her laughter. I want to feel how I did in that OR earlier today for just a few more hours. Behind those four, gray walls of the operating room, I had felt more like myself then I had in months. I wasn't ready to lose that sense of certainty quite yet.

I knew it couldn't last long, however. Sooner or later, more memories of our failed relationship would resurface until I would either start to resent her or, rather, feel the desire to say those words left unsaid so many months ago.

I suppose it is because of these two highly possible and quite unsatisfactory scenarios that I find the word "No," tumbling from my lips.

The truth was that neither conclusion could take us back to a time when going to Joe's together was almost a nightly event. April had hurt me and, as much as it pains me to admit, I had hurt her as well. Nothing we did from this point forward could change that.

April looks stricken as she nods and quickly averts her gaze to the tiled floor beneath her as she shuffles her feet.

"Thanks." I offer, resting my hands against my hips to refrain from reaching out to touch her instinctually. Eight years of friendship was hard to fight off at times like these. "I have…I have something. I have plans. So…" My voice trails off as I see something snap behind her eyes as the realization that I'm blowing her off finally hits her.

"Oh!" April exclaims as she readjusts the case of her electronic chart. She chances a glance up at me from underneath her lashes and manages to even fake a smile. "I just…I just remembered that I'm supposed to meet up with Matthew anyway so…Maybe another time?" she suggests, as though she was the one to turn me down in the first place.

"Yeah." I agree easily, not sure how much sincerity is truly behind my words. "Goodnight."

As I step around her and go to leave I can't help but take one last glance over my shoulder only to find her already staring in my direction. I'm slightly startled but still manage to wave slightly, shooting her a half smile before rounding the corner and disappearing from view.

After I am safe within the attendings' longue, I stop momentarily to squeeze my eyes shut and rub at them with the soles of my hands, trying desperately to wish away the image of disappointment in her eyes.

I groan, whipping off my lab coat and angrily beginning to pace the empty room.

I just didn't get it. Why did April keep insisting of doing things like that? Every time I think I might start to be over her she does something like…_that_. Something so…so…

"infuriatingly enduring?" Alex Karev mumbles an hour or so later as we sit at Joe's bar. As I explain the situation to Alex I can't help but notice his downcast expression as he peels the label off his empty beer bottle. I get the feeling that he was starting to understand where I was coming from thanks to his own first-hand experience with a certain absentee, brunette intern.

For a long time, Karev was the only person who I could ever really talk to about April. He might not understand her or "her brand of crazy", as he had so eloquently put it, but he understood us.

"_You guys are good for each other." He'd told me one night not long after Cristina had returned from Minnesota. "I'm just surprised it took you guys so long."_

"_Why?" I had asked genuinely curious._

"_Oh, come on, Avery." He had laughed as a fresh mug of beer slid in front of him. "Like you were gonna let anyone else swipe Kepner's V-card." He muttered sarcastically against the rim of his glass. _

"_So you saw this coming?" It was at that moment we both turned around to find Cristina and Meredith clumsily trying to drag April on to their own make-shift dance floor in the middle of Joe's._

_I hadn't been able to contain the smile that broke out on my face as the sound of April's protests floated across the bar. Alex snorted from beside me, slapping my shoulder good-naturedly, "From a mile away."_

"Yeah." I sigh out in agreement before tilting my own bottle back for a long sip. "Why are women so messed up?" I ask wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

"You are asking the wrong guy, dude." Alex grumbles, standing from his seat and beginning to slip on his jacket.

"You're leaving already?" I ask more than a little surprised. Karev prided himself on his fish-like tendencies when it came to alcohol but tonight he was barely two bottles in. Wilson really must be getting to him.

He simply shrugs and nods his head as he pulls a few crumpled bills from out of his worn out wallet. "Good luck, man." He says, jutting his chin out in the opposite direction before stalking off.

My eyebrows crinkle in confusion at Karev's cryptic words until I hear Stephanie's voice behind. "Joe? Can I please have a celebratory cosmo?"

Joe eyes me wearily, noting the iciness in her tone and my panicked expression, before nodding and turning around to make her drink.

"What exactly are we celebrating?" I ask keeping my eyes focused on the scratched and worn out wood of the bar.

"Oh, _we're_ not. I am." Stephanie says, smiling in Joe's direction as the drink is placed in front of her. "You see," she starts, pausing to take a sip, "I'm sort of seeing this guy…"

"Steph…"

"Just…" she interrupts, her voice breaking momentarily as her eyelids fall shut, "don't."

When she opens her eyes again I can see a glassiness to them that wasn't there before and instead of fighting her, I swallow and nod, giving her silent permission to continue talking.

She clears her throat and rolls her shoulders back before continuing to talk with the same edge to her tone that was there before. "So I've been seeing this guy for a few months now. And, let me tell you, he's _all_ a girl could ever want." The sincerity in her voice causes my stomach to churn with guilt. "He's smart, successful, and so beautiful it should be sin. But he has one flaw."

I can just barely contain the low, bitter laugh that rises in my chest at the thought. _One_ flaw. I shake my head. If only she knew. The fact that I'm about to let a girl who believes I have only one fault walk away is a flaw in itself.

"He's not good enough for me."

"Ste…"

"Why haven't you called me?" She suddenly asks looking at me with those tear filled eyes again that cause my heart to drop. "It's been 11 days. 11. That's almost two weeks, Jackson. I'm not even sure which is more pathetic: the fact that I know how long it's been or the fact that you don't."

She glances at me then, silently pleading to tell her that she's wrong about everything she's said thus far. It's apparent in the way she bites her lip how much she wishes I would put a stop to what she is saying. But I can't, because I know that she's right.

It isn't until I turn away from her once again that she comes to the realization that I'm not going to stop her. Stephanie turns to the bar too as she takes in and lets out a long, shaky breath before continuing on. "You just..." she starts, but then stops, taking a long sip of her cosmopolitan as she mulls over her choice of words. "You make me feel like one of those boy crazy girls who I despise. Which, let's be clear, I'm not!"

"I know."

"Ever since I started seeing you I…I haven't felt like myself," she confesses, glancing guiltily in my direction. "And I miss that! I miss feeling like me because I am…I am awesome, okay? And I might not have the most experience with relationships but one thing I do know is that _thi_s," she says, gesturing to the space between us, "is not how they're supposed to make you feel." "Relationships are supposed to make you feel like…like you don't have to hide parts of yourself away from the world. They're supposed to make you feel like there is this whole other person out there who you can show yourself to who is gonna accept you for everything you are. Don't you want that?"

I look up from the bar and stare at her for a beat too long, Stephanie having already turned her body back toward the bar before I muster up the strength to nod. "Yes." I reply confidently. "Yes, that's what I want." Before my brain can tell me otherwise, I reach out and grab a hold of her hand resting on the bar causing her to turn and look at me again. "And you deserve to find that, too."

Stephanie looks surprised as I press a light kiss to the back of her hand but I notice the light blush that blooms across her cheeks even as she snatched her hand back. She tries and fails to hide the soft smile that dances across her lips as she hops off the bar stool and shrugs her purse over her shoulder.

Straightening up, she flips her hair over her shoulder and takes a few steps towards the door before spinning back around. "So to answer your original question," she calls to my back, causing me to turn around on my stool to face her. "I am celebrating the chance to find myself again. You should try it sometime." She smiles at me, before the bell to Joe's rings out announcing her departure.

"I think I just might." I mutter to myself, taking one last swig of liquid courage. I place a few bills under the empty bottle for both mine and Stephanie's drinks and grab my coat, heading for the door. I was so unsure about so many things but one thing I was certain of was that, if Stephanie was right, finding myself began and ended with April Kepner. And I was tired of being lost.

_A/N: Hey there! So I'm really not sure whether or not I'm gonna make this a two shot or not. I kinda left the perfect ending in case I get really inspired to write a follow up but more likely than not, if what Sarah Drew says is correct (she said it's her fave episode ever!), then I'll more likely be inspired to write something off the new episode. But that's okay because I think this worked well as a one shot as well __ I just really didn't like how this episode ended. We all know Stephanie and Jackson are bound to break up so to drag it out further then it needed to be with that kiss is just overkill to me. But hey, that's just my two cents. But anywhoooo I really hope you enjoyed this! It was really fun to write since I'm busy fighting off this nasty stomach virus. Who even gets stomach flu in May?! This is absurd. Alright, well now I'm ranting about my life so I'll shut up. But please leave a review. I would love it so so sooo much to know what you thought of it. And as always, I don't own these characters (blah blah blah)._

_Thanks for reading!_


End file.
